Beware the Creeper!

Iain's life as a psychotic crimefighter

Keating - the Musical

March 27th, 2007

[first in a series of catchup posts - bear with me]

Last Wednesday night, murasaki_1966 and I went to see Casey Bennetto's Keating the Musical at the Seymour Centre:

The Good:

The cast were great - Mike McLeish was a revelation as Keating, capturing the charming bastard perfectly whilst keeping up a blizzard of tap-dancing and singing. Eddie Perfect and Terry Serio as everyone else were good too - Perfect being a very fetching Alexander Downer in the "Freaky" segment.

The first half - had a real dramatic momentum, going from the Kirribilli agreement to Keating's first election win.

The Bad:

The second half - all dramatic momentum drained away by loosely connected songs dramatising the "highlights" of Keating's prime ministership; Cheryl and Gareth, the Mabo decision, the Redfern speech. Any sense of story was thrown away in the second half until we reach a surprising and, to my mind, rather masturbatory conclusion. The songs were better in the second half, I grant you, but the overall effect of the show was diminished.

The depiction of Howard. I'm not a fan of Howard but the emphasis on his physicality and general nerdiness were crass (as I guess was Downer as Frankenfurter, but that was saved by being funny.) Serio did a good job of capturing Howard's physical tics, but I realised why the Right (at the time) complained about the bullying from the Left (deeply ironic now, I know, but still...) The end of the show left me with an unpleasant sensation that was compounded by:

The Ugly:

Trying to leave the Seymour Centre car park we got stuck behind an endless succession of BMWs and Jaguars that just kept pushing in a head of us. We literally couldn't move for twenty minutes (whilst other cars backed up behind us) until some dick jumped in his Jaguar, drove the length of the car park and tried to push in in front of us. I lost it. I swore at him and reflected later that -